Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
Description
Combining Grace Paley's four previous collections and new unpublished work, this work traces the career of this direct, attentive, never predictable poet. Whether she describes the vicissitudes and pleasures of life in New York City or the hard beauty of her adoptive rural Vermont, whether she celebrates the blessings of friendship or protests against social injustice, her poems brim with the compassion and tough good humor that have made her stories and essays famous.
User reviews
LibraryThing member handy1
I'm afraid poetry was not her strong suit; short story writing was. These poems are certainly accessible, with no obscure literary references or awkward, stilted prose. Unfortunately, most were so lacking in depth and style, that they weren't particularly thought provoking. To me, they lacked that
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delicious concentration of language that immediately conjurs up images or emotions. Surely, some made me smile, and others contained wise observations, but none made my hit list to share or read again. Show Less
LibraryThing member byebyelibrary
Couldn't disagree with the previous review more. Paley's collection is a gem. For a relatively modest non-telephone book-sized volume, the breadth of her work astounds. You get New York stuff. Jewish stuff. Russian immigrant vignettes. You get her radical politics, trips to Hanoi, 80s Central
You get Vermont in fall, with a Paleyesque caveat:
"I did not want to be dependent on autumn
I wanted to miss it for once"
If only Robert Frost had missed a New England autumn for once in his life.
In "Reading the Newspapers at the Village Store" she sums up fifty years of post-War U.S. foreign policy with the phrase "mild habitual murderers." Worth the price of admission right there.
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America and feminism. You get poems about aging parents. Then aging when it happens to you. You get marriage poems. You get mother poems. You get poems about writing. You get Vermont in fall, with a Paleyesque caveat:
"I did not want to be dependent on autumn
I wanted to miss it for once"
If only Robert Frost had missed a New England autumn for once in his life.
In "Reading the Newspapers at the Village Store" she sums up fifty years of post-War U.S. foreign policy with the phrase "mild habitual murderers." Worth the price of admission right there.
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